It was born in darkness — not the kind that comes with nightfall, nor the kind that disappears with the dawn.
This was true darkness. Endless. Absolute. The kind that presses against the skin, that seeps into the lungs when you breathe.
It didn't know anything else. It never needed to.
In the black, it was cradled. In the black, it grew.
Other creatures crept around the fringes of its home — twisted things with crooked limbs and sharp breath. They knew not to venture too far. Even monsters could feel fear, and they feared the center of the cave, where the dark was heaviest. Where it lived.
It never questioned why. Never needed to.
Until one day, something changed.
A sound — fast, erratic footsteps — echoing down the passageways.
A man stumbled into the cave, panting like a cornered animal. His eyes darted wildly, as if expecting something to leap from the shadows behind him. His legs carried him without thought, deeper and deeper, chased not by the monsters that loitered outside the darkness, but by his own desperation.
It stirred.
The man was strange. Soft. Clean. His presence scratched at something primal inside the creature. He was not like the others — not malformed, not made of gnashing teeth and wet snarls. He was… different.
The creature did not reach out. Not yet. It watched. It always watched.
The man paused. He couldn't see anymore. The stray rays of sunlight streaming in had failed to reach further. He stood still, uncertain, his breathing ragged, fogging the stale air.
But it wanted him to move. It wanted to see.
So it sang.
Not with words, but with memory. A soundless hum that bent itself into familiarity. A lullaby once whispered into the man's ear long ago — by a mother, maybe. Or a lover. Or someone already passed.
The man blinked, startled, but then... his expression changed. His eyes dulled, and his body moved without command. Step by step. The dark didn't frighten him anymore. The call of the voice — soft, sweet, deceptively kind — was all he could hear.
He crossed the final threshold. The air grew heavier. The darkness here was thick, like smoke without fire, wrapping around his limbs, slipping past his clothes. Yet still, he moved.
He stepped into a vast, hollow cavern. No light. No ground he could see. Only black stretching in every direction, swallowing sound and space alike.
Then — two eyes opened.
No. Four. Eight.
Sixteen.
Crimson. Burning. Hungry.
The song stopped. The man woke up from the trance, and then he froze — an expression of raw terror blooming onto his face.
Silence fell, sharp and sudden. He could hear his heartbeat — too fast, too loud — and then, from the dark, something moved.
A limb slithered into view. Long, sharp, coated in something that shimmered like metal, but moved like fur. It wrapped around him, impossibly strong, and pulled him forward.
He tried to scream, but the air was gone.
Another limb emerged — thorned and jagged — and pierced his skin with a sickening crack. The sound wasn't muffled here. It rang, echoing through the chamber, through the tunnels, and down the bones of the earth itself.
Then came the scream.
It didn't sound human anymore — something primal and wrong. It tore through the cave like a gale, reaching the monsters at the edge of the darkness. And even they — beasts that fed on flesh and slept in blood — shrank back, shivering.
And then — silence.
No trace of the man remained.
A week later, disappearances of young men shook the nearby village of Fwerah. Sixteen of them... just vanishing into thin air. A blanket of terror and panic settled over the once lively community.
No one knew why, or how. All they knew was that something was lurking in the dark, always watching, always waiting.
And they were not wrong.
—
Ezekiel walked on for miles. It had been another two hours since he left the edges of the Hydra Lake.
His boots were caked with dust, his breath steady but laced with anticipation. He knew he was close when the trees gradually grew thinner, the absence of monsters and beasts also more pronounced now. The forest floor sloped downwards, and ahead, the world seemed to hold its breath.
Then he saw it.
A towering mouth in the hillside — jagged and yawning — covered in rows of turquoise vines.
The White Stone Cave.
He stopped a few paces from its entrance, eyes narrowing.
The follow-up quest to Ariel's Dilemma was also called Dhamra's Will, but its contents were vastly different. A Pseudo-Epic Quest that should have required him to clear a Level 10 Black Widow Dungeon at the bottom of the waterfall on which Fwerah stood.
But something had changed.
The quest had evolved. Its rarity updated from Pseudo-Epic to Epic. A silent algorithmic shift. The kind that happened when unseen storylines were triggered — and Ezekiel had no clue what he'd done to spark it.
Now, here he was. Alone. Standing at the mouth of a cave that could either be the key to solving a mystery… or a futile attempt at a wild guess.
He wasn't actually certain this was the place either. Maybe 60% sure.
White Stone wasn't a common ore, and it certainly didn't grow just anywhere. It was prized throughout the world of ReLife, Enia — not only for its smooth, radiant beauty that adorned the jewelry of nobles, but also for its more practical use: as the core ingredient in vision potions.
On Earth, darkness was trivial. Holo flashlights, night-vision goggles, solar streetlights. One could argue that the real world was too bright. But ReLife had no such conveniences.
This was a world of oil lamps, flickering torches, and shadows that moved when you weren't looking. Villages and towns couldn't afford to adorn their streets with the recently engineered lampposts. They were expensive, and just one cost as much as a starting village's tax revenue of an entire year.
Hunters and adventurers also wouldn't dare to stumble through dungeons swinging torches in the open — not when it risked drawing monsters with heat-sensitive senses.
That was where the vision potion came in — a cheap, vital solution.
Sold like water in every potion shop and supply stall, it cost only five coppers a vial, and one dose could grant up to eight hours of clear, crisp vision in pitch darkness. All it needed to make was a few common reagents… and a fragment of White Stone.
One White Stone Ore could yield fifty potions.
But the problem? White Stone couldn't be mined just anywhere. The ore was a natural product of darkness — not just absence of light, but centuries of unbroken shadow.
Caves soaked in night, untouched by sun or torch, forgotten by time. Most mines didn't meet the conditions. Except for a special few.
And within the borders of the Fwerah territory, only one cave fit the criteria.
This one.
Ezekiel's eyes swept over the entrance again. The mention of white stone in Lance's story was what had tipped him off and brought him here.
Perhaps, if the kingdom's investigators had taken Lance's dream seriously, they could have also triangulated this location within days. All they needed was to identify places where the formation of White Stone was probable.
But of course, that would have required belief. Belief in an intangible source like a dream, when Lance — the one claiming to have seen it — didn't even have the talent of a Seer.
But there were also several other White Stone Caves within the boundaries of Klarincè Kingdom. Ezekiel knew of them all. That was where his 40% uncertainty stemmed from.
Would a beginner Epic quest really send him outside the borders of Fwerah with the time limit of a mere 7 days?
It actually might, considering he couldn't completely rely on the logic or the information he had from the anonymous sender. Repeated incidents had proven that to him.
But even if this cave wasn't the place, it was still worth exploring.
He took a deep breath.
"Here goes nothing," he muttered, and stepped into the darkness.
The first thing he noticed was the temperature. The air turned cold — not frigid, but damp and close, like breathing through a wet cloth. The ground crunched beneath his boots — fallen twigs, brittle roots.
Sunlight streaming in from the gaps of the vines allowed the stone walls to glimmer faintly, lighting up his way to some extent.
A smell hit him next. Musky, bitter. Old. Like mildew soaked in blood. It was worse than the wolf den he'd been to, but not completely unbearable. Ezekiel had built up tolerance — enough to keep the bile down.
Then, without warning, a ping sounded in his mind. A familiar chime echoed through the air.
{Hidden Dungeon Discovered!}
{Congratulations! You are the First Player to Discover a Hidden Dungeon!}
{Title Earned: "Pioneer"}
{Pioneer: +100 Reputation with all natives of Enia. Stat Bonus: +5 Charm}
{Congratulations! You are the First Player to Discover a Hidden Dungeon in the Territory of Belcrux Continent}
{+200 Reputation with all Natives of the Belcrux Continent}
{Congratulations! You are the First Player to Discover a Hidden Dungeon in the Territory of Klarincè Kingdom}
{+300 Reputation with all Natives of the Klarincè Kingdom}
Ezekiel dismissed the glowing notifications with a wave of his hand. He'd expected them.
Hidden dungeons were the crown jewels of ReLife. Rarer than mythical monsters, more rewarding than most Epic loot chains.
They were referred to dungeons undiscovered by even the natives of Enia, or at least unregistered in the vast archives of this world.
They were remnants of a different time, concealed beneath layers of story logic and trigger conditions.
And they weren't necessarily dangerous because of high level requisite. In fact, the lowest level requirement of a hidden dungeon was Level 5 — like the one he was in.
No — they were dangerous because they were unknown. Maps didn't exist. Monsters didn't follow expected patterns. The rewards from these dungeons were bountiful and untapped, but so were the horrors.
Still, just finding one had made him a Pioneer. With the boost to his reputation, he was one step closer to earning nobility within the Klarincè Kingdom. Four hundred more points, and he'd qualify for the title of Baron.
He smiled faintly. Progress.
The cave grew darker as he ventured deeper. Light no longer reached these walls. The silence stretched long — like something holding its breath.
Something was watching.
Ezekiel walked on, eyes alert, every step measured. Then, finally:
Ping—
The notification he had been waiting for appeared.
{White Stone Ore detected nearby}
{Vision Temporarily Enhanced by 400%}
A sharp gleam flickered in his eyes, a faint silver glow blooming in the depths of his otherwise rich brown irises.
Almost instantly, the shadows shifted into clarity.
He saw them—monsters, tucked within the jagged cracks and hollow voids of the cavern walls. Dozens, maybe more.
Each one watchinghim, eyes glinting with a patient, morbid intensity. They hadn't moved yet—but they would. At the slightest misstep, they would pounce.
Until now, he'd sensed their presence like a bad feeling crawling over his skin. But now he saw them vividly. Incarnations of horrors, beings from one's worst nightmares.
Unlike the creatures in the forest above, there was no avoiding these.
Ezekiel hadn't come here to sneak around. He had come to clear this dungeon.
Leveling up was inevitable—but only if he survived.
If he let these things stalk him from the shadows, he risked being overrun later—when fatigue crept in or a boss fight left him bleeding. That wasn't a risk he intended to take.
He drew the Dark Nebula into his right hand. Then, from his inventory, he retrieved the Reger branch he'd stored after the massacre of the wolves.
He snapped it down into dagger-sized segments. One he held in his left hand, the rest vanished back into his inventory.
He took a breath. Flexed his neck. Rolled his muscled shoulders, loosening the tension like a predator readying to strike.
And then—
He dropped into a defensive stance, feet firm on stone.
"Let's start this hunt."